Creative Process and Writing Life

Gloria is a Colombian American writer, translator, and advocate for multilingual literacy. She is the author of This is the Year, Your Biome Has Found You, and Danzirly, which won the Ambroggio Prize and the Gold Medal Florida Book Award. Her other honors include an Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate Fellowship, Hedgebrook Fellowship, being a Macondista, Highlights Foundation’s Diverse Verse Fellowship, Lumina’s Multilingual Writing Award, and a part of Las Musas. She is proud to be St. Pete's first Latina poet laureate and she enjoys working with other writers and creatives.

Kristen is The New York Times best-selling author of Mostly Dead Things (Tin House, 2019), as well as a queer fiction and essay writer and a social media genius. Kristen’s unique voice focuses on humor writing, LGBTQ issues, and Florida.

Bridgett is the author of the critically-acclaimed memoir The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life in the Detroit Numbers, a New York Times Book Review “Editor’s Pick” and an Entertainment Weekly “Must Read.” She has been invited to speak at numerous venues about her memoir and its historical context. She teaches creative and film writing at Baruch College, CUNY.

Matthew is a novelist, scholar, and Korean adoptee who has written and spoken widely on the subjects of adoption, race, Asian masculinity and parenting. His acclaimed first novel,The Hundred-Year Flood, was an Amazon Bestseller and, among other honors, a Best Book of the season at Buzzfeed, Refinery29, and Gawker.

Jezz Chung is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores personal and collective change through the lens of race, gender, trauma, disability, and neurodivergence. They’ve been recognized internationally by Spain’s El País, Portugal’s Público, Vogue, Teen Vogue, Logo TV, and Made of Millions. You can listen to their podcast with Deem Journal titled Dreaming Different and read their debut collection of poetry, prose, and practices titled This Way to Change: A Gentle Guide to Personal Transformation and Collective Liberation. Jezz has lived in Georgia, Texas, California, and is now based in Brooklyn, New York. They provide professional development talks and workshops on wellness, creativity, communication, and carerr development.

Hafizah Augustus Geter is a Nigerian-American poet, writer, and literary agent born in Zaria, Nigeria, and raised in Akron, Ohio, and Columbia, South Carolina. Her debut memoir, The Black Period: On Personhood, Race & Origin, won the 2023 PEN Open Book Award. Hafizah is also the author of the debut poetry collection Un-American, nominated for a 2021 NAACP Image Award, a finalist for the 2021 PEN Open Book Award, and longlisted for the 2021 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize.

Annabelle Tometich went from medical-school reject to line cook to journalist to author. She spent 18 years as a food writer and restaurant critic for The News-Press in her hometown of Fort Myers, Florida. Her first book, The Mango Tree: A Memoir of Fruit, Florida, and Felony (2024, Little Brown) was called “sweet, sharp” by The New York Times and won the 2025 Southern Book Prize for Nonfiction.  Tometich’s writing has appeared in The Washington Post, USA Today, Catapult, the Tampa Bay Times, and many more outlets. She has won more than a dozen awards for her stories, including first place for Food & Travel Writing at the 2022 Sunshine State Awards. She (still) lives in Fort Myers with her husband, two children, and her ever-fiery Filipina mother.

Joel Christian Gill is the Inaugural Chair of Boston University’s Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Visual Narrative and Associate Professor in the CFA School of Visual Arts. He is also a cartoonist and historian who speaks nationally on the importance of sharing stories. He is the author of the acclaimed memoir Fights: One Boy's Triumph Over Violence, cited as one of the best graphic novels of 2020 by The New York Times and for which he was awarded the 2021 Cartoonist Studio Prize. His newest work is the graphic novel of Ibram Kendi's National Book Award-winning Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (Ten Speed Press 2023). Gill has dedicated his life to creating stories to build connections with readers through empathy, compassion and, ultimately, humanity. He received his MFA from Boston University and his BA from Roanoke College.

Kai Harris is the author of the acclaimed debut novel What the Fireflies Knew (Tiny Reparations, 2022), a Silicon Valley 2023 Read, A Marie Claire Book Club pick as well as being an NAACP Image Award nominee and longlisted for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize. She is a writer and educator from Detroit, Michigan, who uses her voice to uplift the Black community through realistic fiction centered on the Black experience.

Ladee is an award-winning author and scholar. Her critically-acclaimed novel, The Talented Ribkins, was awarded the 2018 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for the Debut Novel and the 2018 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, among many other honors, and garnered her an appearance on Seth Meyers.

Born in Harlem to Dominican parents, award-winning filmmaker and writer Raquel Cepeda is a filmmaker, music expert, and the author of Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina (Atria, Simon & Schuster). Bird of Paradise is equal parts memoir about Cepeda’s coming of age in New York City and Santo Domingo, and detective story chronicling her year-long journey to discover the truth about her ancestry. The book also looks at what it means to be a hyphenated American-Latina today. Raquel travels widely to speak to diverse audiences about Latina identity, social justice, gentrification, inequality, and discovering your story through writing and filmmaking.

Susan Abulhawa speaks widely on the power of storytelling, particularly for marginalized communities. Susan is the founder of Playgrounds for Palestine, a non-profit organization dedicated to upholding the Right to Play for Palestinian children under Israeli occupation and in refugee camps outside of Palestine. Susan is one of the most widely-read Arab authors. Her debut novel, Mornings in Jenin, is a multigenerational family epic spanning five countries and more than sixty years. With an unflinching look at the Palestinian question, it was translated into thirty languages and became an international bestseller. Her latest novel, Against the Loveless World, won the Arab American Book Award.

Amrita Chakrabarti Myers is an award-winning historian, journalist, activist and commentator whose work examines the intersections of race, gender, power, and freedom, specifically focusing on the lives of enslaved and free black women. Amrita is the author of the award-winning Forging Freedom: Black Women and the Pursuit of Liberty in Antebellum Charleston as well as The Vice President’s Black Wife: Resurrecting Julia Chinn, published by Ferris & Ferris in October 2023.

Kathryn Hulick is a freelance journalist who covers AI and computing for Science News and Science News Explores. She's also the author of books for young people or anyone who is curious. Her book The UFO Files (Quarto, 2025) combines a sci-fi story with scientific explanations of the marvels found on board an alien spacecraft. Her book Welcome To The Future (Quarto, 2021) is about how technology could change the world, and Strange But True (Quarto, 2019) uses critical thinking to explore the science behind paranormal mysteries. She provides talks and workshops for professionals in STEM and other fields on how to effectively convey information through storytelling.

Award-winning journalist Danyel Smith is author of the critically-acclaimed Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop (One World / Penguin Random House, April 2022). Danyel is also creator/host of the popular Black Girl Songbook, a podcast that centers the sounds and stories of black women (Spotify Original).